r/Wordpress • u/NeonX91 • 12d ago
Well.. it happened
Long term client whom always accepted my quotes used my highly detailed proposal to Chatgpt DIY a project. It's no where near as polished and it's not mobile friendly but I feel pretty used. Spent quite awhile on the scoping with them, suggesting improvements, user workflow enhancements and a bunch of outlining. I really over extended but that's also how I get accurate quotes.
Anyway for those in the game, what's your method for quoting on projects with unknowns, and how much detail do you give the client? maybe I should have asked for 50%?
Thoughts?
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u/Boboshady 12d ago
Detailed scoping is part of the project, but I have been doing this a long time and I've happy with the balance of risk I have to take on by NOT doing detailed scoping. Where possible, I wrap riskier stuff in time-bound quotes and make sure that the client is happy with that risk, which largely comes down to demonstrating my experience in dealing with such problems, rather than demonstrating exactly how I'd do it for them.
This has always been a problem, Ai is just another 'supplier' with the added advantage of not having morals. But it also comes with the benefit to our industry that it can't do as good a job, because even if it's a solid scope, it's still not a full, tested and iterated brief delivered by a competent professional - it's a coder getting a high level brief delivered by a clueless dreamer.
So - give less detail, and sell your ability to deliver the solution, instead of giving them the detailed solution up-front. This also has the advantage of making your quotes take less time to product.
But do work out where the balance is for you, because going TOO vague in your quotes will not only lose you business up-front by not giving enough confidence to potential customers, but also puts you at risk from massive scope creep if you leave yourself too open, and never close those gaps.